

















ART BY THE WAY 
By TIMOTHY COLE 





NEW YORK 
WILLIAM EDWIN RUDGE 
1925 





Art by the Way 


eyi¥CANNOT subscribe entirely to the 
(heef definition of art as “humbug,” though 
ENC it is acknowledged by those who pro- 
SIN} nounce it such—denounce it rather— 
areaes4 that the term humbug is only used 
ae want of a better word; it is merely suggestive, 
the true one belonging to that zone of thought 
beyond the range of verbal expression—which, of 
course, is nowhere. To be sure, in art, as in every 
other human activity, there is a certain admixture 
of—whatever you might call it—and it may be 
said, jocosely—but this should rather make us blush 
—that art is humbug when we come to know the 
many tricks and artifices the artist resorts to in the 
~ construction of his work, and how the artist him- 
self often must advertise, and pose and affect eccen- | 
tricities, with the object ostensibly of boosting his 
wares. I remember a very popular American artist, 
years ago, who used to promenade Fifth Avenue in 
New York of a Saturday afternoon, when crowds 
of the élite in all their finery were on view, accom- 





4 ART BY THE WAY 


panied by a friend and the extraordinary spectacle of 
two enormous and very beautiful wolf-hounds. He 
hada very fine studio, high, spaciousand lighted from 
above, with elegant appointments, and onthe ground 
floor—you walked into it from the street, for it would 
never do to have patrons walk up stairs. (There were 
no elevators to artists’ studios in those days, and no 
sky-scrapers.) I remember being somewhat over- 
awed on glancing into it and seeing the beautiful 
model seated sumptuously on the stand, wonderfully 
draped against a lovely colored screen, with a large 
ancient guitar in her lap from which she occasion- 
ally struck entrancing harmonies that echoed through 
the gorgeous space, and were even heard from the 
street. It was whispered that the rent of that studio 
was $50,000 a year. Of course, in the eyes of the 
world, an artist who could afford to pay so high a 
rent would be thought to be very successful, and as 
‘nothing succeeds like success,’’ this business slogan 
has invaded the ateliers, and we find artists vying 
with each other in decorating their studios with 
costly ancient draperies, quaint bric-a-brac, elegant 
vases of palms and such like humbugging parapher- 
nalia, with the shopkeeper’s instinct for business. 
What a contrast poor Millet’s studio presents, which 
I saw intact at Barbizon thirty-seven years ago: 
A little room, about fourteen feet square, on the 
ground floor of his cot, with a little barn-like win- 


ART BY THE WAY 5 


dow, three by three feet, a pine table in the center 
with portfolios and sketches scattered about; noth- 
ing more. And I'll not forget another fellow who 
affected very high ladies’ heels to his shoes, painted 
red to attract the eye, and long flowing locks capped 
with a Rubens chapeau. He wore a cape, and he 
walked with a mincing gait, keeping his gaze stead- 
fastly upon the ground, yet taking furtive glances 
sidewise to see if people were looking at him and 
his Mexican hairless dog, that followed close upon 
his painted red heels. Those were the days of the 
long-haired zsthetics, when Oscar Wilde in his 
15th century costume started his memorable ‘‘walk 
down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily” in his 
‘medieval hand,’ as was sung by Gilbert and 
Sullivan. It was said that Oscar realized} by that 
clever piece of humbug, a very considerable in- 
crease in the sale of his poems, which were then 
newly launched upon the market. This is not ‘‘art 
for art’s sake,’’ but for the artist’s sake. But it is 
not the predominant characteristic of the true art- 
ist, though the incentive for money is not incom- 
patible with a high ideal in art and an indefatigable 
endeavor to achieve it. Naturally, artists, like other 
folk, are human and have their idiosyncrasies and 
weaknesses, and it is a peculiarity of many good 
people to be on the lookout for their peculiar freaks 
and to attribute them to genius—‘‘idiosyncrasies 


6 ART BY'THE WAY 


of genius, you know!”’ I have seen Whistler, upon 
entering his studio of a morning, confront again 
the canvas he had left painting the day before, and 
rub his hands together in glee, like a boy, chuckling 
to himself with the utmost complacency, so enam- 
ored was he of his own performance, and quite 
oblivious apparently to the visitor at his elbow, 
whom he had received the moment before (which 
was myself). And of Corot, I have heard it said by 
one who knew him that, upon the completion of 
his landscapes, he would often be seen silently throw- 
ing them kisses, so enraptured was he with his own 
productions; from which we must charitably con- 
clude that as Nature paints the best part of the pic- 
ture, according to Emerson, the artist beholds in it 
qualities of beauty he was not conscious of having 
produced: he did not consciously seek the beauty, 
therefore, the beauty came—for beauty, like happi- 
ness, is not found by those who seek it, but rather 
by those who, happily, are able to place themselves 
in an attitude of receptivity towards it. 

I once talked with the president of one of our 
most important railroads, spanning the country from 
ocean to ocean, whose avocation was art. He was 
certainly a skillful artist of the brush as well as a 
generous patron of art and a man of broad culture. 
(There is nothing incongruous in the blending of 
culture with practical efficiency.) He was thoroughly 


ART BY THE WAY 7 


convinced of the humbug of his particular voca- 
tion, that of railroad-man, and in fact of the hum- 
bug of everything—art, science, religion, medicine 
—"‘all, all is humbug and vexation of spirit.’’ But 
here it may be interposed, by way of parenthesis, 
that if “‘all is humbug,”’ then there is no criterion 
upon which to form this judgment, and it were the 
same as if we averred that truth alone prevailed; 
but the mere statement that “‘all is humbug” car- 
ries with it its own refutation, for humbug cannot 
judge of humbug; there must be something that 
is not humbug which serves as a basis of judgment. 
There must be something stationary from which to 
judge the revolution of things: straight lines to tell 
us what curved and crooked ones are. If we could 
abolish shade, we could not appreciate what light 
is; therefore, light, as well as shade, would cease to 
exist. It would be the same with good and evil. 
It was salutary for Adam and Eve to be expelled 
from Paradise, since living forever ina state of bliss 
could never teach them what bliss or Paradise was. 
Our whole education consists in acquiring a just 
sense of the proportion, relativity, and value of 
things. We all know that the most incorrigible liar 
carries with him that which, as a compass, indi- 
cates to him his deviation from the path of recti- 
tude—there could be no proceeding otherwise. The 
vantage ground then, from which to judge of the 


8 ART BY THE WAY 


humbug of things, must be in the spirit where is 
the immovable seat of truth. But to return to our 
railroad magnate : ‘This running to and fro—What 
folly!” he said. ‘The more we travel the more rest- 
less we become! Instead of restlessly exploring the 
universe in the vain hope of finally, ‘in the beautiful 
land of somewhere,’ arriving at the El Dorado of 
our dreams, we should use our time and money and 
brains to more sensible advantage if we endeavored 
to become more expert in home cosmography [this 
from a railroad man!] by cultivating our garden 
plots and thus proving ourselves real patriots in 
contributing our mite towards beautifying the land 
that we profess so much to love.” (This in allusion 
to the humbug of patriotism.) Of course, it was by 
no means his policy to discourage travel, but, on 
the contrary, to foster it by every device imaginable. 
And in exposing the humbug attaching to his own 
particular calling, he said: ‘The problem with us 
always—with respect to the traveling public—is 
how to catch ’em: we appeal to their imagination by 
issuing illustrated pamphlets—colored, if possible 
—showing beautiful views of the scenery along our 
railroad, telling them that as true patriots and lovers 
of their native land they should not think of dying 
before getting acquainted with its glorious ‘rocks 
and rills,’ its “woods and templed hills,’ the mighty 
canyons and the awe-inspiring mountains of the 


ART BY THE WAY 9 


wonderful country of which it is our proud privi- 
lege to boast as citizens. We show also pictures of 
the company’s hotels, by the way. We make our 
stations and stopping places,” he said, ‘‘as attract- 
ive as possible with flower beds (red and yellow 
prevailing), lawns and fountains; and we are care- 
ful to have wary agents and good-looking servants 
affable and agreeably condescending, with that risi- 
bility of aspect, modest cadence of body, and con- 
ciliating cooperation of the whole man, that makes 
every one feel well pleased with him or herself— 
the problem being how to catch ’em, so that they 
will travel by our route again, you know. You see,”’ 
he continued, ‘‘we are all pretty well weighted with 
our own particular heads; we like to be flattered— 
to be smiled upon, cajoled, taken in and done with 
a grace, befooled and bamboozled, so long as it is 
accompanied with deferential respect! And art,” 
he went on, “‘you must know well enough what a 
camouflage that is! Is not the idea how to catch ’em, 
always the main thing with you artists? A patch 
of red,’’ he continued, “how it catches the eye! 
That red is the most humbugging color of the whole 
gamut. The crafty artist knows just how sparingly 
and effectively to use it. It was said of Turner that 
he once sent to the Royal Academy a delicate grey 
water-scape, which the jealous hanging committee 
—his enemies—placed between two large pictures 


10 ART BY THE: WAY 


of strong flaring colors, hoping thereby to submerge 
it. On varnishing day, Turner noted the outrage, 
for his picture languished like the man, spoken of 
in Scripture, who had fallen among thieves. So, pro- 
curing his paints, he merely touched ina floating red 
buoy—a miraculous stroke—which, upon the broad 
expanse of grey, proved a most powerful ‘hit-me- 
in-the-eye,’ and made his picture a howling success. 
Ruskin sent it soaring with his humbugging florid 
phrases. It was pronounced the gem of the collec- 
tion and people thronged to see it and to gloat over 
that little red apple of a buoy floating in its silvery 
grey expanse, while the two pictures between which 
it was hoped to be submerged were ignored as vul- 
gar nonentities. Now that,’’ he remarked, ‘‘was a 
signal stroke of wit on Turner’s part—a literal illus- 
tration of the proverb ‘a word fitly spoken is like an 
apple of gold in a picture of silver’—a red gold 
apple on a silvery grey expanse as the Japanese have 
taught us the trick. But you see how little it takes 
to humbug the people if you can only hic upon that 
little.’ ‘‘Man wants but little here below, but wants 
that little strrong’’—despite prohibition. 

Now we all know that if art is not imitation 
(humbug), it largely concerns itself in that endeavor 
to deceive. The artist from the very first is schooled 
in the practice, and the more he can make his pic- 
ture life-like, the more he is praised by a certain 


ART BY THE WAY + a 


cult that goes crazy over realism. I remember when 
Herkomer—that English business artist-—came over 
here some forty years ago on a flying visit, and in- 
cidentally to keep his brush in activity. He cleverly 
contrived to advertise his proposed advent, and was 
consequently heralded on his arrival by the press. 
He began making a painting, large and imposing, 
of Castle Garden, showing the various types of 
immigrants going to and fro, with touches of red 
things flying in between, which was immediately 
bought, though unfinished, by the City Fathers for 
$15,000. Where it is now Heaven only knows. 
Grand advertisement! He commenced forthwith 
to hold a one-man’s exhibition at the then newly 
built Rembrandt Studios. That was before the sky- 
scrapers. His father, who accompanied him, was 
a wood-carver, and his works were also on show, 
each piece decorated witha strip of blue ribbon tied 
about it, which trick of enlivenment, catching the 
eye, certainly gave a touch of éclat to each object. 
He was in his heyday of popularity—most indefati- 
gable and determined to make hay while the sun 
shone. He enlarged one of my small engravings 
after Fortuny of a few inches in width, to some- 
thing over five feet, and had some student go over 
each line, reénforcing it with color, and did not fail 
to tell how much the experiment cost him. This he 
also had on exhibition and served him to expatiate 


12 ART BY THE WAY 


upon, reading more into it than I had ever dreamed 
of. I stumbled into his reception, quite unexpect- 
edly, with a friend who dragged me in, in my old 
work-clothes, and was overcome, almost, as he ap- 
proached me threateningly, and said, pointing to 
the enlargement, “Do you see what you have done?”’ 
I] stammered somewhat in a daze that “I didn’t 
recognize having done anything of the kind,”’ which 
was nothing but the evident truth, but which fail- 
ure on my part to rise wittily and sympathetically 
to the occasion—to bob up with an apple of gold 
in this ‘network of silver’’—together with my 
country bumpkin manner and workaday clothes, 
evidently disappointed him, and he turned abruptly 
from me into the company; but I overheard him, 
as I quietly withdrew, speaking against the famous 
Holbein and telling the ladies what a dull fellow 
he was—merely a plodding topographer of the face! 
The female element was charmed with Herkomer’s 
personality, declaring he had a head like Jesus Christ. 
He began painting their portraits forthwith at five 
thousand dollars a sitting, check in advance, and on 
the understanding that if said portrait was not fin- 
ished in the one sitting, it had to go at that. Every 
day, therefore, he had a new sitter and all declared 
that his portraits were so marvelously like-life— 
super life-like, in fact—that they fairly seemed to 
walk out of their frames, which is the very thing 


ART BY THE WAY 13 


Whistler—a far greater artist—says a portrait should 
not do, but to lie quietly within the confinement of 
ics representation. It certainly looks like a sad com- 
mentary on art that the frame, with its tinsel glit- 
ter, should seem to play the important réle of ac- 
complice in the humbug of a picture, to which is 
sometimes added the shady trick of the shadow- 
frame—an artful dodge for lending greater mystery. 
This, as many of us know, is simply a box—cabi- 
net finished, of some fine wood—into which pic- 
ture and frame are let, and which projects two or 
three or four inches beyond the frame, thus casting 
the picture into a delicate shade. It has the same 
effect that the broad-brimmed hat has over a lady’s 
face, softening the light; only with the face there 
is the added charm of increased lustre to the eyes, 
since they catch the reflection of light from beneath 
(especially if the blouse be white) causing them to 
gleam apparently with a light of their own. The 
broad-brimmed hat is undoubtedly a fascinating 
yet humbugging device. Some managers of exhibi- 
tions now give notice to intending exhibitors: ‘‘No 
shadow frames allowed,”’ realizing that this con- 
trivance gives undue advantage over pictures lack- - 
ing it, and that a square deal by juries, to all, is their 
first thought. “*The square deal’’ reminds me, in 
this connection, of what a cubist is reported to have 
said: that a square deal by a jury was only possible 


14 ART BY THE WAY 


from square men, and square men are always, and 
only, cubists! There is a certain element of truth 
underlying the cubist’s theory, as with all theories 
generally. To the square head there is not that ob- 
loquy attaching as to that perverse fellow known 
as the ‘‘round head”’ ! The basic forms of things are 
not round but proceed in straight lines from the 
apex to the apex of the curve in each form. Clouds 
now, for example, are perceived to be not round, 
as depicted by the old school forty years ago. Art 
is a structure with a geometric basis and must be 
squarely built and conform, as all true theories, to 
the rectitude of the earth. The whole thing they 
say—beauty, poetry and all—rests upon the plumb- 
line and the level. Rectitude, probity, first, after- 
wards your flourishes and ornaments if you will. 
The Cubists’ art was but a passing phase. It failed 
in that it was but skeletal: admitting no flesh to 
adorn its bony or angular framework; no beauty. 
Think of having your portrait painted with your 
nose drawn exactly the shape of a triangle ! 

The artist must speak in a language that all may 
comprehend and in addition he must flatter. Not 
by any means does the policy of his craft consist in 
telling ‘‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but 
the truth.’’ Far from it—it can’t be done. Nobody 
yet has succeeded in accomplishing it. He has his 
secret tact of omissions, his subtle secrets of form 


moe Dye) Ee WAY 15 


and color, his craft-mysteries and deliberate schemes 
of artistic method. He is a fabricator, a calculator 
and an exaggerator. When, in process of time, as a 
master-craftsman, grown grey in the craft, he may 
finally come to confess to the truth of what Blake 
said, that ‘‘the devil, not God, made nature.’’ 
However paradoxical it may appear, in art, the 
more near-sighted, to a degree, the seeing becomes, 
the broader grows the vision. Artists whose eyes 
are normal, as the good God meant them, see far 
too much for art’s sake. The devil is forever attend- 
ant at their elbows whispering “‘yea, skin for skin,” 
leading them astray into the shallows. Thus Corot, 
when in the full power of sight, painted works that 
were dry, hard and narrow as compared with his 
latest achievements when he was about sixty years 
old and myopia had set in. His work then assumed 
a breadth and fulness that was hailed as something 
new and made him at once famous, though Whis- 
tler told me he had painted Corots before Corot was 
heard of, which is a very different thing to painting 
them afterwards. There are now as many Corots in 
existence as there are crows scattered over our corn- 
fields at seed-time. It would, of course, be invidi- 
ous to infer that, in Corot’s case, the mere altered 
physical condition of his eyesight, coincident as it 
was with his gain in breadth of view, resulted in 
the singular charm of his final or silvery period. 


16 ART BY THE WAY 


Nor would the fact that he discovered the secret 
(which he discreetly kept to himself) of employing 
the middle distance—in which lies the chief charm 
of a landscape—as the foreground of his pictures— 
though possibly a contributing factor—account for 
their power to hold us spellbound. There never will 
be any recipe for the making of a work of art. It is 
a fact, however, that it happens sometimes that the 
impairment or loss of vision is compensated for by 
a gain in inward sight or illumination, showing 
that sight is not so much a matter of the physical 
eyes after all. Not long since, we had artists of the 
supermundane schools affecting an unknown tongue; 
of perfectly normal vision, practicing optical dis- 
tortion, so as to see things myopically and astigmat- 
ically, and who show us landscapes that look as 
intelligible upside down as in any position: of men 
as trees walking and trees like the cross-pieces of a 
railroad sign; and portraits that resembled a rug 
thrown over the back of a chair, or if material- 
looking enough to picture a human being, then of 
some creature one might never wish to meet in the 
flesh. The astonishing thing is that such things have 
been sold at good prices to intelligent folk '—doubt- 
less through the enchanting wiles of the art dealer 
aided and abetted by the art critic. In the face of 
the manceuvrings of the art dealer, however, the 
poor artist is more sinned against then sinning. | 


ART BY THE WAY 17 


was once staying at the house of a millionaire, en- 
graving his old master, and an art dealer, one of 
the guests, had just managed to sell him a picturs 
by Cézanne—a portrait of an ugly-faced female 
worker of repulsive, ignorant mien and cross eyee 
—the squint being the main feature. An art critic 
called—evidently an important personage from his 
bearing—and the host exclaimed, ‘‘Come and see 
my new find.’’ It was on an easel and the light was 
carefully adjusted by the knowing dealer. ‘‘Now sit 
right here’’—and the chair was placed by the host 
who stood over him, in his rear. ‘‘Now what do 
you think of that?’’ The critic was overcome, even 
as he was overborne. There was nothing to do but 
to launch out in words of admiration :“‘wonderful !”’ 
“stunning !’’ (he doubtless was stunned) ‘‘Such life 
‘‘Such a brow the eyes have to live under, clear as 
flint, on either side the formidable nose, curved, 
cut and colored.like an eagle’s claw!”’ etc. The host 
naturally beamed with pleasure and, turning, asked 
me what I had to say. I confessed that I could add 
nothing in praise of what was already so poetically 
pronounced, but before I could view the picture in 
the light of the honorable critic, | should have to 
rinse my eyes from the old masters in which they 
had been steeped for so long. ‘‘Yes, yes,” they all 
- conceded, ‘‘the old masters are all right, but you 
know we can’t forever be thinking in terms of the 


1? 
see | 


18 ART BY THE WAY 


old fellows; progress ! progress ! you know.’’ Thus, 
in the name of “progress,” as in that of liberty, 
how many crimes are committed ! 

A very essential ingredient of art, to be sure, is 
novelty. Often it is mere novelty irrespective of fit- 
ness that is sought, as with the fashions in dress. 
We wake up every day inquiring if there is any- 
thing new. If we progressed at as rapid a rate as 
this desire in human nature, left to itself, would 
force us, we would soon be all top and little root; 
hence the value of conservatism: standards, gram- 
mars and dictionaries, laws and constitutions, which 
act as brakes upon the wheels of progress—for the 
road of progress, you know, is always one of up and 
down hill. There is a beautiful picture by Botticelli 
illustrating this idea in the Ufhzi gallery of Florence 
called The Birth of Uenus. The beauty, poised 
upon a shell, is being wafted to the shore by the 
combined blowing of two genii of the air, repre- 
sentative of FEolus. One, with cheeks distended, is 
blowing furiously, but his companion is restraining 
him, and with open mouth is merely breathing 
lightly upon the goddess. In these genii are figured 
the liberal and conservative elements that are con- 
tinually playing upon human nature—the one shout- 
ing “‘progress,’’ the other counseling ‘‘not so fast.” 
There are fashions in art as in costumes—they vary 
from epoch to epoch, and every generation laughs 


ART BY THE WAY 19 


at the old fashions but seriously follows the new. 
But raiment, however, we always will have, so 
that much is standard with us; the forms of the 
clouds vary, but the clouds, thank Heaven, will 
always float in view, as reminders of the passing 
nature of all things. So art will endure, as long as 
the sun—the master artist—emblem of the human 
spirit that colors for us the black and the blank— 
continues to paint us pictures for our delectation. 
This may be, but what must we think of the present 
Russian revolution with its program for artists— 
the very liberality of which presages a serious men- 
ace to art in that classing artists with teachers (who 
are in the first grade and receive a hundred dollars a 
week), it lets them do as they please! Relieved, 
therefore, of the salutary obligation of painting pot- 
boilers, they can then ‘‘loaf and invite their souls” 
and the result will be either chaos in art, or master- 
pieces will be so common that nobody will care for 
them, and there will then be repeated that condi- 
tion which Taine records in his Philosophy of Art, 
when, at the summit of the Renaissance, for fifty 
years the gods of art had been pouring out unsur- 
passable masterpieces, people, finally, through being 
surfeited thus, turned up their noses at them. They 
wanted something new and they got it, so great 
Italian art died. If we could pave the streets with 
gold and jewels, we would naturally tread them 


20 ART BY THE WAY 


under foot—old mother Earth seems ever bound to 
assert her sway in the end. 

Now, if the studied exaggeration of things is 
next door to lying, art—great art, | mean—is em- 
phatically of this nature. Many a promising young 
man starts in life with a poetical and natural gift 
for exaggeration, which, if nurtured in congenial 
and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitation | 
of the best models—the old masters, if studying 
art—might flower into something really great and 
wonderful. Of course, it must be along the lines of 
the beautiful; and the fictitious must always be 
held up as fact—the very reflection of nature, as 
Shakespeare admonishes, but never practices. But 
as a rule the hopeful young son (through the un- 
healthy environment of this scientific age in its mon- 
strous worship of facts) gravitates to an academy, 
if determined to paint pictures, where if he stays as 
long as the majority unfortunately are enabled to 
do (by indulgent parents, who, if they really.under- 
stood what was salutary for them, would cast their 
bantlings on the rocks), he comes out trimmed and 
ready for—business. As an instance of one example 
out of many, I knew just such an one who spent 
years at the model, learning to draw, and in study- 
ing anatomy, and who finally painted a crucifixion, 
so frightfully insistent in its ghastly pallor of death, 
swollen livid hands and feet and contorted muscles, 


ART BY THE WAY 3 21 


that it seemed to me only hardened doctors, stu- 
dents of anatomy or criminal vivisectionists, whose 
zesthetic faculties are completely atrophied, could 
calmly face the horror of it. The old masters, with 
wisdom of insight, have treated such themes so as 
to glorify the crucified Christ—quickening the dead 
fact so as to make it mean something in the emo- 
tional sphere—to touch the hearts of the devotional. 
One may see the sun rise and only remark a disc as 
round as a saucepan, while another may behold in 
it a pean to the glory of God. One may paint a. 
dunghill so honestly as to suggest its natural ex- 
halation, another so that it calls up the vision of 
Chanticleer. It is related that Turgenieff, the great 
Russian realist, commenting upon the realism of 
Zola, said: “I don’t care to know how a woman 
sweats, whether down her back or under her arms. 
I want to know how she thinks.’’ The character of 
one’s thoughts is the sum of the individual. And 
Turgenieft’s diagnosis indicates the true distinction 
between realism and reality. Realism tends to de- 
generate into emphasis on sensational but relatively 
unimportant detail—it is analytical and is a mat- 
ter of time and space. Reality is synthetical—takes 
in the whole of life—and by its essence is spiritual 
and goes hand in hand with idealism. 

There is such a thing in art as unimaginative 
realism, against which we may place imaginative 


22 ART BY°*THE WAY 


reality, the former as illustrated in the case just 
cited, the latter as may be exemplified, let us say, 
in the glorious productions of the renowned Velas- 
quez, and this is the pronounced difference be- 
tween art as reality and art as humbug. Not that 
Velasquez’s art, as reality, is any the more real or 
any the less idealistic than the art of Titian, Michel- 
angelo, or Raphael. Art, as we know, is selection; 
and selection, which is the very spirit of art, is 
nothing more than an intensified mode of over- 
emphasis. Art has no other aim than her own per- 
fection and proceeds simply by her own laws. The 
artist, to a certain extent, is a law unto himself, 
since he is guided by an intuitive feeling in his 
judgment, and he endeavors by every means at his 
disposal to mount the impression, or fact he is seek- 
ing to convey, by selecting from his reminiscences 
of nature only those salient truths that will con- 
tribute to the mounting of his idea—like the poet 
who seeks the most expressive word, or the jeweler 
who polishes his brilliant with many facets and 
mounts it in the most effective manner that it may 
shine forth, infinitely more really a brilliant than 
in its natural state. I once saw a few tourists who 
had climbed, from curiosity, upon the pedestals of 
Michelangelo’s Night and Day and Dawn and 
Evening, in the Medici chapel of Florence, and I 
could not help noting how curiously small and in- 


{ 


ART BY THE WAY 23 


significant they appeared beside the god-like mag- 

nificence of the artist’s creation. Here was the over- 

powering weight of reality—of something supremely 

real—and you felt that the great sculptor was the 

creator of life and not the copier of it. A steady 

course in Michelangelo reduces our living friends to 

shadows and our acquaintances to the shadows of 
shades. His prophets and sibyls have a kind of fer- 

vent immortality that dominates us and defies scep- 

ticism. And it is not otherwise with Velasquez, 

who peoples his canvases with a like enduring vital- 

ity, different in kind, doubtless, but not in degree. 

As his great predecessor, he used life not as an im-. 
itative, but as a creative medium. It was the same_ 
with Millet, who never painted from nature but 

went to her as to a book of reference. The like also 

is true of Whistler, and of our contemporary Joseph 

Pennell, whose lithographs and etchings are on the 

highest plane of creative art. These, as true artists, 

see something that is worth seeing, and see it not 

merely with actual and physical vision, but with 

that nobler vision of the soul which is as far wider, 

in spiritual scope, as it is far more splendid in artis- 

tic purpose. 

“What is that abridgment and selection we be- 
hold in all spiritual activity,’ Emerson observes, 
‘but itself the creative impulse? For it is the inlet 
of that higher illumination which teaches to con- 


24 ART BY THE WAY 


vey a larger sense by simpler symbols. What is man 
but nature’s finer success in self-explication? What 
is man but a finer, compacter landscape than the 
horizon figures—nature’s electicism? And what is 
his speech, his love of painting, and the reality of 
truth he deduces from nature, but a still finer suc- 
cess? All the weary miles and tons of space and 
bulk left out, and the spirit or moral of it con- 
tracted into a musical word, or the most cunning 
stroke of the pencil.” 

I remember, years ago Pennell did some illustra- 
tions of Perugia, and among them was one that 
particularly charmed me called a Perugino Land- 
scape. In the course of my perigrinations in Italy, 
I went to Perugia to realize, alas! that only in the 
land of eternal realities and verities might I dis- 
cover that lovely Perugino landscape. It would be 
the same if we journeyed to Japan expecting to en- 
counter there, in its life, the beautiful imaginative 
quality that delights us in the charming works of 
the great artists such as Hokusai, Hokkei or of 
other of their native painters. We would only be- 
hold in Tokio, for instance, pretty much the same 
workaday folk moving in a similar atmosphere of 
common everyday existence and weighted with the 
mediocre cares of life imprinted on the general run 
of faces, as here at home, from which moribund 
conditions art prays, “good Lord, deliver us.’’ Na- 


ART BY THE WAY 25 


ture is stupid as compared with art, and misleading 
if implicitly trusted, despite Wordsworth to the con- 
trary, who tells us that ‘Nature never did betray 
the heart that loved her’’—as though nature had 
predelictions, and was not completely indifferent as 
to whom she betrays by her will-o’-the-wisp into 
the bog, or into the thirsty desert by her mirage, or 
swallows up with her earthquake. And as for hold- 
ing up the mirror to nature, as Shakespeare is thought 
to teach with respect to art, what would we get but 
a reflection! We may as well hold up the camera 
and call the photograph art. But art isa re-creation, 
the spirit of the artist must dominate nature, using 
her but as raw material. He must ‘‘subdue the 
earth,’ as God admonished Adam to do in the gar- 
den of Eden. It is the letter that killeth but the 
spirit giveth life. Nature is inarticulate if man does 
not make her vocal. Therefore, it is man that we 
must look to who “‘lent from the glow of his na- 
ture warmth to the cold, and with light, colored the 
black and the blank,’’as Browning tells us. Evidently 
art is a distillation. From out the gross groceries of 
life and nature are distilled through the alembic of 
the artist—supposing he has a secret distilling ap- 
paratus—its choicest essences. The world cares little 
for anything a man has to offer that has not previ- 
ously been distilled in the alembic of his life. Nature, 
we see, is matter struggling into mind, and so art is 


\ 


26 ART BY THE WAY 


mindexpressing itself under the conditions of matter, 
and yet by no means is art a physical fact. Art is 
vision or ‘‘intuition,’’to quote from a very profound 
scholar and critic, the Italian, Benedetto Croce, ap- 
ropos of the subject, who says: ‘“The artist produces 
an image or a phantasm; and he who enjoys art 
turns his gaze upon the point to which the artist 
has directed, looks through the chink which he has 
opened, and reproduces that image in himself. ‘In- 
tuition,’ ‘vision,’ ‘contemplation,’ ‘imagination,’ 
‘fancy,’ ‘lyrical,’ ‘figurations,’ ‘representations,’ and - 
so on, are words continually recurring, like synonyms, 
when discoursing upon art, and they all lead the 
mind to the same conceptual sphere which indicates 
general agreement. But the fact that art is intuition, 
obtains its force and meaning from all that ic im- 
plicitly denies and from which it distinguishes art. 
It denies, above all, that art is a physical fact: for 
example, certain determined colors, or relations of 
colors; certain definite forms of bodies; certain defi- 
nite sounds or relations of sounds—in short, what- 
soever be designated as ‘physical.’ The inclination 
toward this error of physicizing art is already pres- 
ent in ordinary thought, and as children who touch 
the soap-bubble and would wish to touch the rain- 
bow, so the human spirit, admiring beautiful things, 
hastens spontaneously to trace out the reasons for 
them in external nature, and proves that it must 


ART BY THE WAY 27 


think, or believes that it should think certain colors 
beautiful and certain other colors ugly, certain forms 
beautiful and certain other forms ugly. And if it be 
asked why art cannot be a physical fact, we must 
reply in the first place that physical facts do not 
possess reality, and that art, to which so many de- 
vote their whole lives and fills all with a divine joy 
is supremely real; thus it cannot be a physical fact, 
which is something unreal. This sounds at first 
paradoxical, for nothing seems more solid and se- 
cure to the ordinary man than the physical world; 
and besides, in order to surpass what of strange and 
difficult may be contained in that truth, to be- 
come at home with it, we may take into considera- 
tion the fact that the demonstration of the unreality 
of the physical world has not only been proved in 
an indisputable manner and is admitted by all phi- 
losophers (who are not crass materialists and are 
not involved in the strident contradictions of ma- 
terialism), but-is professed by these same physicists 
in the spontaneous philosophy which they mingle 
with their physics, when they conceive physical phe- 
nomena as products of principles that are beyond 
experience, of atoms, electrons, or of ether, or as 
the manifestation of an Unknowable: besides, the 
matter itself of the materialists is a super-material 
principle. Thus, physical facts reveal themselves, 
by their internal logic and by common consent, not 


28 ART BY THE WAY 


as reality, but as a construction of our intellect for 
the purposes of science. Consequently, the question 
whether art be a physical fact must rationally as- 
sume this different signification; that is to say, 
whether it be possible to construct art physically. 
And this, to speak ironically, is certainly possible, 
for we indeed carry it out always, when, turning 
from the sense of a poem and ceasing to enjoy it, 
we set ourselves, for example to count the words 
of which the poem is composed, and to divide them 
into syllables and letters; or, disregarding the zxs- 
thetic effect of a statue, we weigh and measure it: 
a most useful performance for the packers of stat- 
ues, as is the other for the typesetters who have to 
set up pages of poetry; but most useless for the con- 
templator and student of art, to whom it is neither 
useful nor licit to allow himself to be ‘distracted’ 
from his proper object. Thus, art is not a physical 
fact in this second sense, either; which amounts to 
saying that when we propose to ourselves to pene- 
trate its nature and mode of action, to construct it 
physically is of no avail.”’ 

Albeit we must not lose sight of the fact that, 
while it is manifestly absurd to attempt to physi- 
cize art, it is equally as absurd to imagine ‘‘that art 
—an inspiration—can stand alone and independ- 
ent of its physical representation ! Without matter 
there can be no art. Without matter there is no stuff 


ART BY THE WAY 29 


in which imagination may create an image. You 
may tell me of a delicious pudding that you have 
made, but I shall want to taste it, since the proof of 
the pudding is in the eating of it. The apostle James 
says, in a passage with which we are all familiar: 
‘Show me your faith’’ (and your faith is nothing 
more or less than your art of life)—‘‘show me your 
faith without your works, and I will show you my 
faith [or my art of life] by my works.”’ ‘‘An aspi- 
ration enshrined within the bounds of a represen- 
tation’’—that is art. There has got to be represen- 
tation. To quote again from Benedetto Croce, ‘‘In 
reality we know nothing but expressed intuitions: 
a thought is not a thought for us, unless it be possible 
to formulate it in words : a musical fancy only when 
it becomes concrete in sounds ; a pictorial image only 
when it is colored. It is certain that when a thought 
is really thought, when it has attained to the matu- 
rity of thought, the words run through our whole 
organism, soliciting the muscles of our mouth and 
ringing internally in our ears; when music is truly 
music, it trills in the throat and shivers in the fingers 
that touch ideal notes; when a pictorial image is pic- 
torially real, we are impregnated with lymphs that 
are colors, and maybe, where the coloring matters 
were not at our disposition, we might spontaneously 
color surrounding objects bya sort of irradiation, as 
is said of certain hysterics and of certain saints, who 


30 ART BY THE WAY 


caused the stigmata upon their hands and feet by an 
act of the imagination ! Thought, musical fancy, pic- 
torial image, did not exist without expression, they 
did not exist at all previous to the formation of 
this expressive state of the spirit. If we take from 
a poem its metre, its rhythm and its words, poetical 
thought does not, as some opine, remain behind: 
there remains nothing. The poetry is born, simultane- 
ously, with those words, that rhythm, and that metre. 
Art therefore, like the force and matter of the physi- 
cal world, is inseparable and inconceivable apart 
from its physical substance. Therefore, also it must 
be emphasized that intuition and expression, fancy 
and technique, or more plainly art and matter, are 
rationally distinguished, though not as elements of 
art; and they are related and united between them- 
selves, though not in the field of art but in the wider 
field of the spirit in its totality. Technical or prac- 
tical problems to be solved, difficulties to be van- 
quished are ever present to the artist and there is 
truly something which, without being really physi- 
cal, and being, like everything real, a spiritual act, 
can be metaphoricized as physical in respect to the 
intuition. What is this something? Let us see: the 
artist is, above all, a practical man—practical in 
the sense that while working every thought means 
for him a stroke, since his labor is to render pos- 
sible or easy, for himself and for others, the repro- 


ART BY THE WAY 31 


duction of his ideas or images. He must see his 
image reproduced. He alone can reproduce it, if he 
would have the beholder reproduce it in himself. 
Thus, his practical acts which assist that work of 
reproduction, guided by his acquired knowledge, 
practice, and reason, are called his technique: and 
since they are Becrical they are distinguished from 
contemplation and reverie, which is theoretical, and 
seem to be external to it, and are therefore called 
physical; and they assume this name the more easily 
in so far as they are fixed and made abstract by the 
intellect. Thus, writing and phonography are united 
with words and music, canvas, wood and walls 
covered with colors, stone or wood cut and en- 
graved, iron, bronze and other metals melted and 
molded to certain shapes by sculpture and architec- 
ture. And this apparent transformation of the in- 
tuitions into physical things—analogous with the 
apparent transformation of wants and economic 
labor into things and into merchandise—also ex- 
plains how people have come to talk not only of 
‘artistic things”’ and of ‘‘beautiful things’’—blend- 
ing unconsciously the intuitional with the physical 
—but also of “‘a beautiful of nature.”’ It is evident 
that, besides the instruments that are made for the 
reproduction of images (reproduced in the beholder) 
objects already existing can be met with whether 
produced by man or not, which perform such a 


32 ART BY THE WAY 


service—that is to say, are more or less adapted 
to fixing the memory of our intuitions: and these 
things take the name of ‘‘natural beauties,’’ and 
exercise their fascination only when we know how 
to understand them with the same soul with which 
the artist or artists have taken and appropriated 
them, giving value to them and indicating the point 
of view from which we must look at them, thus 
connecting them with their own intuitions. But the 
always imperfect adaptability, the fugitive nature, 
the mutability of “natural beauties”’ also justify the 
inferior place accorded to them, compared with 
beauties produced by art. Let us leave it to rhetori- 
cians or madmen to afhrm that a beautiful tree, a 
beautiful river, a sublime mountain, or even a beau- 
tiful horse or a beautiful human figure are superior 
to the chisel-stroke of Michelangelo or the verse 
of Shakespeare or Browning; but let us repeat with 
greater propriety that “Nature is stupid as com- 
pared to art, and that she is mute if man does not 
make her speak,’’ and she speaks by the virtue of 
technique. 

Thus it is that we venture to afhrm that art is 
no humbug—so far as realistic or great art is con- 
cerned—but that, on the contrary, it is a real, a 
very real, a supremely real thing. It is only those 
unfortunate and benighted folk who are indifferent 
to its spiritual influence that are unreal, or whose 


ART BY THE WAY 33 


existence does not call for any sort of proof, and 
there are shoals of them submerged in the sea of 
humanity. 

The artist, like the evangelist, is a fisher of men. 
He wants to bring them all within his gospel net. 
His is the gospel of beauty. He believes that the 
world (of men and women) is saved, and is being 
saved, and will yet be wholly saved through the be- 
nign, ameliorating and uplifting influence of beauty. 

There is truth of meaning in what Goethe says, 
that ‘‘the beautiful is greater than the good; for it 
includes the good and adds something to it’’; it is 
the good made perfect. And this sense of perfection, 
which prompts us to ask from every creation of man 
the very utmost that it ought to give, and renders 
us intolerant of the smallest fault in ourselves or any- 
thing we do, is one of the results of art cultivation. 
No other human productions come so near to per- 
fection as works of art. Art when really cultivated, 
trains us never to be completely satisfied with im- 
perfection in what we ourselves do and are; to ideal- 
ize,as much as possible, every work we do, and most 
of all our own characters and lives. 

It is the delightful Oscar Wilde who tells us that 
“Life gains from art not merely spirituality, depth 
of thought and feeling, but from the models art 
holds up, life can form itself materially along art’s 
lines.’ Darwin tells us, in his remarks on sexual 


34 ART BY THE WAY 


selection, of the susceptibility of birds to bright colors 
in the formation of their brilliant plumage. And 
we are all familiar with how Jacob increased his 
flocks and herds at his uncle Laban’s expense. How 
he agreed with his uncle to take for his hire all the 
cattle that were ring-streaked, speckled and spotted, 
and then set to work and peeled rods of poplar, 
making the white appear which was beneath the 
bark, setting these in the drinking troughs where 
the cattle came to drink, so that the flocks brought 
forth ring-streaked, speckled and spotted. The nov- 
elty of the rods so treated was such as the animals 
had not been used to seeing in the fields and woods, 
and must have impressed their dull brains with a 
dim stirring of something analogous to a sense of 
beauty. The Greeks, with their quick artistic in- 
stinct, saw the value of the influence of beauty and 
set lovely statues in their public squares and by the 
fountains where the women congregated with their 
urns to draw water. Also in the bride’s chamber 
was set the statue of Hermes or of Apollo that she 
might bear children as lovely as the works of art 
it was her wont to gaze upon. I remember while 
engraving a picture by Gentile da Fabriano of The 
Adoration of the Magi in the Belli Arti of Florence, 
that a lady would often come and dwell in con- 
templation, silently and long, over the lovely pic- 
ture, which depicted the beautiful Madonna with 


ART BY THE WAY 35 


her charming infant receiving the adoration of the 
three wise kings; one, a very old reverend being, was 
in the act of kissing the infant’s little bare foot, while 
the little hand of the child was resting upon the 
grizzly bald head. The lady would stand as though 
entranced with the beauty of the scene, and unable 
to withdraw from it. | know this lady and she kept 
a proof of my engraving of this old master in her 
bedroom, and the male child that was subsequently 
born of her, seemed to be the very counterpart of 
the infant by Gentile da Fabriano, both as to form 
and color; for it remained, for a period of its infancy, 
of the golden hue of the painting. It developed a 
most charming disposition of sweetness, combined 
with manly virility, and is now living in America. 

A beauty that is indefinable, not explicable, is 
rarer and dearer than one that we can see to the end 
of. We are creatures more particularly of environ- 
ment than heredity; in fact, strictly speaking, of 
environment wholly—heredity being but the sum 
total of many past environments. The protoplasm 
of our nature is of such extreme tremulus impres- 
sionability that nothing is comparable to its deli- 
cate sensitiveness. Hence, it is but reasonable to in- 
fer that an environment of beautiful and noble works, 
to the appreciation of which we are educated, must 
naturally result in a society of enduring charm, and 
this is what Plato thought—to quote from a pas- 


36 ART BY THE WAY 


sage in his Republic: “‘a simple atmosphere of all 
fair things, where beauty, which is the spirit of art, 
will come oneye and ear like a fresh breath of wind 
that brings health from a clear upland, and insen- 
sibly and gradually draw the child’s soul into har- 
mony with all knowledge and all wisdom, so that 
he will love what is beautiful and good, and hate 
what is evil and ugly (for they always go together) 
long before he knows the reason why; and then, 
when reason comes, will kiss her on the cheek as a 
friend.’’ When we realize that art is an indispen- 
sable accompaniment of life, we shall teach our chil- 
dren to use color, pattern and design with such skill 
that they may make their daily life a thing of con- 
stant inspiration and enthusiasm—their very exist- 
ence ‘‘a thing of beauty and a joy forever.’’ So the 
patient artist, like the true fisher of men that he is, 
with his line artfully baiced—with that little red 
apple of a buoy—is forever on the job, because, you 
know, the problem is, and ever will be, “‘how to 
catch ’em.”’ 











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